


The Dishes

by betweenthings2



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:41:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27798655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenthings2/pseuds/betweenthings2
Summary: "It's just, well," he paused, "it's that I want to kill myself and you're upset about the fucking dishes."
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	The Dishes

"Goddamnit, Sirius," Remus muttered when he entered the kitchen. There were still dishes in the sink. Remus had been out of town for nearly a week and there had been dishes in the sink when Remus left. The coffee mugs from the morning Remus had left were still on the counter where they had been abandoned, so Remus set them in the sink and went to find Sirius. After searching through nearly the whole house, Remus tried their bedroom, which was empty, then, when he heard a small splash, the master bathroom.  
The door wasn't closed all the way, so Remus carefully pushed the door open to find Sirius sitting in a bath. Only the ends of his hair were wet, but he slid down so the water was just below his Adam's apple and he had his knees pulled up to his chest. There was an ashtray with a half smoked cigarette sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Sirius made no move to acknowledge Remus when he came in, just kept staring at the ceiling, so Remus crossed the bathroom and knelt next to the bathtub and set the ashtray on the counter.  
"Sirius?"  
Sirius didn't answer. In fact, he didn't even seem to hear Remus.  
"Sirius? Love?" Remus tried again. Sirius still didn't respond, so Remus reached out to rest his hand on Sirius's shoulder. As soon as Remus's fingers met Sirius's bare skin, Sirius flinched away violently, splashing Remus with cold water. Remus immediately jerked his now cold and wet arm away and repeated, "Sirius?"  
"'m sorry," Sirius muttered, now cowering in the corner of the bathtub.  
"It's just me," Remus said. "Just me. Did you take something?"  
Sirius nodded, and said, "Ativan," but didn't move.  
"How much did you take?" Remus asked. When Sirius didn't answer, he asked "How long have you been in here?" and stuck his fingers in the water. "The water is freezing."  
Sirius shrugged.  
"Come on, let's get you out of here," Remus said, standing and grabbing a towel.  
"Ok."  
Remus held out his hand and helped Sirius up and out of the bathtub, then wrapped him in a fluffy grey towel. He drained the water from the bathtub, then sent Sirius into their bedroom and told him to get dressed.  
Some time later, after Remus had given up and done the dishes himself, Sirius joined Remus in their kitchen. He was dressed in sweatpants and one of Remus's hoodies and looking a bit more alert and awake.  
"You've been smoking again" Remus commented, drying the last of the dishes.  
Sirius shrugged. "I guess. How were your meetings?"  
"Fine."  
"I missed you," Sirius said, glancing up from the counter.  
Remus finished drying his hands and tossed the towel aside, muttering, "Yeah, so much so that you left my coffee mug from Monday on the counter."  
"What?" Sirius asked.  
"Everything's a mess around here, Sirius. I know you've got shit to do, too, but Christ, the dishes from Monday," Remus said, facing Sirius across the counter.  
"I'm fucking doing my best, Remus" Sirius snapped, eyes flashing with rage.  
"Your best," Remus repeated, nodding. "Your best is nasty dishes in the sink for a week, a shit ton of Ativan, a week of takeout leftovers in the fridge, and cigarettes when you said you had quit."  
"Yeah, Remus. My best."  
Remus scoffed. "How do you burry your head in your fucking perscription bottle for a week and ignore your life? How is that your best? How is destroying yourself your best?"  
"You know what?" Sirius asked, standing up. "Fuck you, Remus. Fuck you. I'm not doing this tonight. I thought you understood, but I guess not."  
Remus sighed. "I don't want to fight with you, Sirius, not tonight. Not ever."  
Sirius's stance softened a bit, but he said, "Well, then, you shouldn't have been pissy with me about the Goddamn dishes. Or the pills. Or the cigarettes. Or the fucking takeout. I'm coping, Remus. I'm doing my fucking best."  
"Sirius," Remus pleaded.  
"You don't get to tell me how to handle things until you've dealt with everything I have," Sirius interrupted. "And you won't live though what I have and I'm glad you won't because I love you and it was hell and it still is, but you don't get to tell me how to cope."  
"I'm sorry," Remus said, his tone earnest. "I am. I don't mean to tell you how to deal with shit."  
Sirius nodded.  
"We're falling apart, Love," Remus muttered, tossing the dish towel aside.  
Sirius didn't say anything, just looked down at his hands and fumbled with his engagement ring.  
"How the hell did we get here, Love?" Remus asked, leaning on the counter across from Sirius.  
Sirius shrugged. "I'm too fucked up, and you're too," he paused, "well, not fucked up."  
"You're not-" Remus began.  
"I'm not what?" Sirius interjected. "I'm not fucked up? You and I both know that's not true. I mean, you said it yourself, my best is week-old dishes in the sink, Ativan, a week of takeout, and cigarettes when I said I had quit."  
"Sirius," Remus sighed.  
"What?" Sirius snapped. "I mean, it's fucking true. I couldn't make myself do the damn dishes so I didn't. Cooking was too much work, so I ordered takeout all week. I told you I quit smoking. You watched my throw out my last pack and my lighter and the fucking ashtrays."  
"Sirius," Remus tried again.  
"Do you want to talk about the Ativan?" Sirius carried on. "Is it that you think I'm a junkie now? It's not drug abuse if it my own fucking perscription, Remus."  
Remus gave in incredulous laugh and shook his head, but instead of snapping back, he said, "I know you want to fight, Sirius, but I'm not going to give you that. This," Remus paused and gestured around the kitchen, "mess we've made is something we have to talk about. We can't fix it be screaming at each other, then having angry sex."  
Sirius glared.  
"I understand that you're upset and I'm not saying that you shouldn't feel your feelings, I'm just saying that I don't want to fight. When you're ready to talk about things, so am I," Remus finished.  
Sirius stood there, stunned. Remus was right though-- whenever they fought, they usually yelled at each other until one of them went a little too far and they ended up having rough, angry sex that left Sirius sore for days and with bruises on his hips from Remus's hands and Remus had red marks all across his back from Sirius's nails. Sirius loved it. It was the only kind of outlet he knew for all the angry energy he had when they fought. "Remus," Sirius tried.  
"Go and take some time. Get your head together and then we can talk, ok?" Remus said softly. "Do you want me to make coffee or tea?"  
Sirius shrugged, then said, "If you don't mind. I'm gonna go downstairs. Will you come down in a little while?"  
Remus gave a small, kind of sad smile, and said, "Sure, Love."  
Sirius gave a small nod and left, leaving Remus alone in the kitchen.  
Remus let out the breath he must have been holding since he found Sirius in the bathtub. Then he started a pot of coffee and went upstairs to clean up the water on the bathroom floor and the ashtray left on the counter and change out of the clothes he had been wearing since before he got on a plane on the other side of the country that morning. Remus wasn't quite sure when his life had turned into this. He was only 25, but suddenly he had the mundane kind of existence he had never wanted. He had a job where he traveled a lot and sometimes he came home only to fight with his lover who was, admittedly, unwell, and spent his time trying to clean up the rubble his absence left. Maybe, Remus mussed as he went back down the stairs, he should just quit his job. Money was a nonissue for both him and Sirius and maybe he could clean up the mess if he was there more often.  
Sometimes, Remus remembered the year after he and Sirius graduated from college. They got an apartment and sometimes they traveled and they spent the holidays holed up in their apartment together, happy. They had been happy. Well, they had been happy until Remus got a job in an office and started having to travel all the time and Sirius tried to kill himself after his little brother's funeral. Then Sirius had been committed to a psych ward for fourteen days and Remus spent ten of those out of town. When Sirius got out, they moved into a house and Sirius set up an art studio in the basement that Remus almost afraid to go into because he was almost afraid of Sirius's mental illness. Remus had proposed to Sirius not long after they bought the house, but it felt like more of a hail Mary for their relationship than something romantic. It wasn't that Remus didn't want to marry Sirius, because he did, it was that he was still out of town all the time, leaving the one person he had promised to love, protect, and care for alone to struggle. Sirius still wore his engagement ring, even though it had been almost a year and a half with no wedding. Remus knew that the day Sirius took the ring off, it would be over.  
Almost reluctantly, Remus poured two cups of coffee from the freshly-brewed pot and made his way down to Sirius's basement studio. When he reached the bottom, he called out, "Sirius? I'm coming in, ok?"  
Remus didn't hear anything, but Sirius had asked him to come down, so he pushed open the door and walked into the studio. He remembered seeing the basement when he and Sirius had bought the house, but he hadn't been in the basement in months. Remus hardly recognized the space. Sirius had painted all the walls a creamy, off-white color when he moved his studio into the space, but now they were covered with acrylic paints, Sharpie sketches, and notes and reminders. The space was, admittedly, cluttered with sketchbooks stacked at random, still packaged canvases lying on the floor, and semi-finished pieces leaning wherever there was space. Sirius was nowhere to be found in the first room, so Remus carefully crossed the cluttered studio to the slightly less messy office space that had a door to the outside, where Sirius sometimes took meetings and designed commissions. The door dividing the studio and office was cracked open, so Remus just pushed it open further with his foot, rather than knocking. Inside, Sirius was sitting cross legged in one of the chairs in front of the desk, sketching. The furniture in the office space was made of dark wood and had a grand presence that seemed out of space in Sirius's messy, cluttered studio space, but it had come from the Black Family Estate and was important to Sirius.  
"I brought coffee," Remus said quietly, not wanting to startle Sirius.  
Sirius shut his sketchbook, then placed his pen back in the cup on the desk before he said, "Thanks."  
"I'm sorry," Remus said, once he had passed Sirius his cup of coffee and sat down.  
Sirius glanced up with a puzzled look on his face.  
If he didn't feel so awful about everything, Remus would have found Sirius's look cute and endearing. Instead, it just made him feel worse, so he said, "I'm sorry I'm never here. I'm sorry I leave when you need me. I'm sorry that I thought my goddamned meetings were more important than you when you in the fucking psych ward. I'm sorry I've been shitty."  
"I'm not upset that you were out of town then," Sirius muttered, more to his coffee than Remus. Then, to Remus, he added, "I should be able to take care of myself."  
"I should have been here though. Work isn't more important to me than you are, Sirius. I know I haven't exactly shown you that, but it's not," Remus argued.  
Sirius sipped his coffee and didn't say anything.  
"And I'm sorry about today."  
Sirius nodded, looking like he had something to say, but stayed quiet again.  
"Sirius?" Remus asked, knowing that look well.  
Sirius shrugged and set his coffee down on the desk. "It's just, well," he paused, "it's that I want to kill myself and you're upset about the fucking dishes."  
Remus opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, Sirius continued.  
"I'm doing my best, but sometimes I feel like this and I'm sorry you're seeing it. Usually, I can get through it before you get home and things are ok. It just wasn't this time."  
"Fuck, Sirius," Remus sighed. "Have you talked to your therapist?"  
"Some," Sirius said. "I'm not going to try it again, I just kinda want to sometimes."  
"Why don't you call me when you feel like that?" Remus asked quietly.  
Sirius shrugged, then admitted, "I don't want to bother you. You deal with my shit enough when you're at home. You don't need to be burdened with my shit when you're working, too."  
Remus set his coffee cup on the desk and reached over to take Sirius's hands. "Listen to me when I say this," he said. "You are not a burden. You are the most important person in my life. I love you."  
Sirius nodded, but he kept his eyes trained on his lap.  
"How long?"  
Sirius shrugged again. "A couple months?"  
"Fuck."  
Sirius glanced up, eyes sad, and whispered, "I think it's getting bad again, Moony."  
Remus let go of Sirius's hands and ran a hand through his hair, then asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"  
Sirius sighed and glanced around the room before explaining, "My best looks different than yours, Remus, because my brain doesn't work like yours. I have a chemical imbalance in my brain and medication doesn't magically fix it. Sometimes my good days look like your bad days, and I'm not trying to make you feel guilty, but that’s the way it is. But, when you come home and you're upset because my best doesn't look like yours, how am I supposed to tell you that it's getting bad again?"  
"I'm sorry."  
Sirius finished his cooling coffee, then said, "I'm sorry it scares you."  
"I didn’t want you to know that."  
"You didn't do a very good job of hiding it," Sirius countered.  
A wave of shame rolled over Remus, but he swallowed it down and said, again, "I'm sorry. I know I keep saying that, but I am."  
"I know."  
"I want to fix this, Sirius," Remus said.  
"You can't fix my fucking brain, Remus. You can’t just tell me you love me or make some grand gesture and expect it to magically get better." Sirius waved his left hand as he said that and the low light bounced from his silver engagement ring.  
"I know, Sirius, I do," Remus sighed. "But, we never talk about anything anymore and I'm never here and everything's falling apart. Fuck, Sirius, I miss you."  
Sirius stayed quiet for several moments, studying Remus, then said, "Come with me."  
"Come with you where?"  
"To see my therapist. I have an appointment on Monday," Sirius answered. "Sometimes I talk about you and she told me I can bring you with me, if I want."  
"Wouldn't that make it more like couple's counseling than your therapy appointment?" Remus asked.  
Sirius shook his head. "She keeps telling me to being you and she can just help us talk about shit, because if we don't talk about whatever the fuck is going on with us, with everything, I'm going to dive headfirst into a perscription bottle and never come out, or I'll be committed again."  
"Ok," Remus agreed. "Monday."  
Sirius was quiet for a moment, like he didn't expect convincing Remus to be that easy, then he said, quietly, "Thank you. Will you be able to take the afternoon off?"  
"I want to put in the work to fix us, Love," Remus said. "And I think I'm going to put in my two weeks on Monday."  
"What?"  
"I'm going to put in my two weeks. I'm done with this fucking job and all the traveling and shit," Remus repeated.  
Sirius looked stunned, a bit like he had lost his grasp of the English language.  
"I'm tired of it," Remus said. "I'm tired of having a 9-to-5 existence and doing something I don't care about. And I miss you. You're more important to me than any fucking job. And," Remus added with a pleased look, "I have novel ideas."  
Finally, Sirius smiled. "You know that'll just make us a pair of weird artists with fucked up sleep schedules."  
Remus laughed and nodded. "Only with you," he said.  
Sirius, too, laughed, then fell serious, saying, "You know that won't fix my fucked up brain, right? I'll still have bad days and bad weeks."  
Remus gave Sirius a sad smile and said, "I know, but at least you won't have your bad days alone."  
"I love you," Sirius mumbled. "Thank you."  
"Anything for you, love, anything," Remus answered easily, like he had never been more sure of anything. Then, he reached out and brushed some of Sirius's long hair back and asked, "Have you eaten anything today?"  
"I spent most of the day high in the fucking bathtub, Remus," Sirius said.  
"Let me make you some real food, ok?" Remus said, standing up and grabbing their coffee cups. "I think I there's pesto and chicken in the freezer.  
"You don't have to cook," Sirius said. "We could just get takeout. You must be tired and I've only made you more stressed."  
"You've lived off of takeout for the past week. I'm going to make you something. Plus, I haven't anything since I got to the airport this morning and I slept on the plane," Remus said. "And, you are not a burden. I like doing things for you."  
"Selfless bastard," Sirius muttered, but he had a fond look on his face and there was no venom in his words.  
"Come on," Remus said, holding his hand out for Sirius. "Have you considered tidying up at all?" Remus asked as they crossed Sirius's studio space.  
"Nope," Sirius said, popping the 'p.' "Besides, have you ever met a neat artist?"  
"You're the only artist I know," Remus answered.  
"Well, we’re messy people," Sirius said, sitting down at the breakfast bar in the kitchen.  
Remus hummed in response and started digging through their freezer, then cupboards.  
"Do you want any help?" Sirius asked, after several minutes had passed.  
Remus started defrosting chicken in the microwave before turning to Sirius to say, "Nah. Just sit there and look pretty."  
"I haven't washed my hair in two weeks and, again, I spent most of the day high in the bathtub. I don't think pretty is the right word," Sirius said.  
"You're always pretty," Remus countered, replacing now-thawed chicken with frozen pesto in the microwave.  
Sirius watched for several minutes as Remus sliced, then cooked the chicken, then said, "I missed you. I missed us."  
Remus glanced up. "We're gonna fix us," he promised.  
Sirius nodded, but didn't say anything. Instead, he busied himself with picking at his cuticles and fiddling with his engagement ring. After several minutes had passed, Sirius asked, "Remus, can we get married?"  
Remus glanced up from his new task of making pasta and said, "We're engaged, aren't we? Doesn't that mean we're going to get married?"  
"I mean, yeah, but," Sirius set his ring on the counter, "most people get married within a year of getting engaged and you proposed almost a year and a half ago. It seemed more like a Hail Mary for or relationship after the psych ward than anything else." Sirius paused, then added, "I want to, though, if you do. Get married, that is."  
Remus adjusted the heat on the pasta, then moved to lean on the counter across from Sirius. "It was a Hail Mary of sorts," he admitted. "I felt like I needed to do something to tell you that I still loved you after everything. I bought the ring like two days before everything, and I was going to ask you on Valentine's Day or doing something equally cheesy and romantic, but I felt like I needed to remind you that you're loved, after everything."  
Sirius nodded slowly, then said, "You don't have to keep calling it 'everything,' you know. I tried to kill myself and you had me committed to the psych ward. Those are facts."  
"I know," Remus said, softly. "It's just that if I say it so plainly I just see you passed out and bloody in the bathroom. It saves me some heartache not to say it."  
"I'm sorry," Sirius said. "I'm sorry I hurt you."  
"We're moving on," Remus said firmly. "We're going to be happy again. I promise."  
"I'll hold you to that," Sirius responded.  
"When do you want to get married?" Remus asked, turning the conversation back to a lighter topic as he went back to preparing their meal.  
"The fall, I think," Sirius decided. "In November or something."  
"You want to wait another year?" Remus questioned, finally making up two plates of food.  
Sirius nodded. "Yeah, I think so. Weddings are a bitch to plan, or so I've heard, and I want to be stable, I want us to be stable before we getting married. I want it to be special, not something I cry a lot about."  
"November it is," Remus agreed, setting a heaping plate of pesto pasta and chicken in front of Sirius and topping it with parmesan cheese before sitting down with his own plate.  
Neither of them spoke for a while after that; they were too busy eating, not having realized how hungry they actually were. The kitchen remained quiet until Remus broke the silence.  
"Hey, Sirius?" Remus asked.  
"Hmm?"  
"Why did you say you were glad I wasn't here when you were in the psych ward?"  
Sirius nearly choked on his food when Remus asked that. Once he had recovered, he shrugged and said, "I dunno. It just wasn't pretty. They kept having to sedate me the first week and I couldn’t stop crying the second week. I was fucking exhausted and they kept giving me pills that put me in this awful fog. I remember seeing other people have visitors and just being so glad that you weren't around to see me like that."  
"Still, I'm sorry I wasn't here. I fucked up."  
Sirius shook his head, and said, "I'm not saying I appreciate any of the circumstances surrounding my hospitalization, but I'm glad you weren't around to see much of it. And I'm glad I finally got help. You and I both know it was bound to happen eventually. You remember what I was like when you met me."  
Remus nodded. He did, indeed, remember what Sirius was like when they met. A cynic, a rebel, and a punk, Sirius was always doing something destructive and stupid, be it self-medicating and partying or spray painting on the side of the campus center or even pasting copies of his morbid or violent art in all the buildings during parent's weekend on their campus. If anyone knew it was Sirius, they never said anything. "I know, I think I'm just going to feel guilty about that for a long time."  
"Have you ever thought about finding yourself a therapist?" Sirius asked quietly. "I've fucked you up, but it might help to talk about it."  
"Maybe," Remus said. Then he added, "It's not your fault, though. You can't blame yourself for everything."  
Sirius muffled a yawn and said, "You sound like my fucking therapist."  
"She must be a smart woman," Remus said.  
"You know I had a therapist when we were in college?" Sirius asked, muffling another yawn.  
"You can tell me about it the morning, ok?" Remus said, getting up and setting their plates in the sink. "You look tired."  
Sheepishly, Sirius nodded, and grumbled, "Yeah, 'cause you made me have fucking feelings instead of angry sex."  
Remus laughed, a real laugh, and led Sirius up the stairs. "I love you, you know."  
"I love you, too."


End file.
